Down 0-2 and Written Off, the Guardians Forced a Game 5 — Now Cleveland Gets the Winner-Take-All It Wanted

CHICAGO — THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2026 — The Cleveland Guardians were supposed to be done two days ago. Down 0-2 in the ALDS, outscored 7-3 across two lifeless losses at home, they flew to Chicago with their season on life support — and then they remembered how to hit. A 9-3 demolition in Game 3, and now a 9-5 slugfest win in Game 4 on Thursday night at Rate Field, has dragged this series to a winner-take-all Game 5 on Saturday night in Cleveland. Eighteen runs in two games will do that.

01 The Comeback Nobody Saw Coming

Let's set the scene, because it was bleak. The White Sox took Game 1 in Cleveland 3-0 on Saturday, then ripped Game 2 4-3 on Monday, and suddenly the franchise that went 60-102 last year — the one coming off three straight 100-loss seasons — was one win from its first ALCS since 2005. The Guardians had managed seven hits and three runs in the first two games combined, as NBC Sports noted. Their best hitter, José Ramírez, was 0-for-the-series. The season was basically over.

Then Game 3 happened: 9-3 Cleveland, eleven hits, a franchise-record 19 strikeouts from seven pitchers, and triples from Jo Adell and Ramírez that turned a tense game into a laugher in front of 40,590 stunned White Sox fans, according to Reuters. And Thursday night, the Guardians did it again — this time with the long ball.

02 The Fifth Inning That Flipped It

The Guardians were down 2-0 heading into the fifth on Thursday, and the White Sox crowd was serenading Cleveland starter Parker Messick with "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" as he walked off in the third, per the Akron Beacon Journal. The season was slipping. Then Stephen Vogt made the move that changed everything: pinch-hitter Patrick Bailey for Austin Hedges, and Bailey crushed a 3-1 pitch from Erick Fedde 376 feet, just inside the right-field foul pole — the first home run by either team in the entire series, and the hardest-hit ball of Bailey's career, according to NBC Sports.

Two batters later, with Jordan Hicks on in relief, Ramírez went deep to right-center on an 0-1 pitch. A two-run shot. Just like that, it was 3-2 Guardians. The White Sox answered with two in the bottom of the fifth to go back up 4-3 — and then Cleveland's sixth inning happened, and the series flipped for good.

03 The Sixth-Inning Avalanche

Six runs. Five hits. One inning. The Guardians took a 4-3 deficit and turned it into a 9-4 lead in the top of the sixth, and the White Sox bullpen — the unit that carried them through their shocking regular-season turnaround — completely came apart, as USA Today reported. Bailey delivered again with a go-ahead RBI single as part of the uprising, per NBC Sports. Miguel Vargas opened the ninth with a solo homer for Chicago, but it was cosmetic. The comeback was already complete.

For the full blow-by-blow of how this one unfolded, read our live Game 4 coverage — and for the Game 3 rout that started it all, here's how Cleveland stayed alive on Wednesday.

04 Pitching on Fumes

Here's the catch, and it's a big one: the Guardians needed eight pitchers to get through nine innings on Thursday, per the Beacon Journal. Messick walked four in three innings and got the hook early. Vogt admitted the plan went up in flames fast: "Obviously, the script got ripped up in the third," he said. "When you have to go to the bullpen early, you got to get creative in a win-or-go-home."

And here's the wrinkle that could decide Game 5: Cleveland turned to Gavin Williams — the guy lined up to start Game 5 — to close out the ninth in his first career relief appearance, according to the Beacon Journal. He got it done, but now the Game 5 pitching plan is genuinely up in the air. Williams was excellent in his Game 2 start (5⅓ innings, 11 strikeouts, tying Bartolo Colón for the second-most Ks in club playoff history), but starting a winner-take-all game on short rest after a relief outing two days earlier is a different ask. The White Sox, meanwhile, will have their full arsenal lined up and a fan base that just watched its team fail to close out a series at home twice in a row.

05 Saturday Night in Cleveland

So here we are: Game 5, Saturday, Oct. 10, 8 p.m. ET at Progressive Field, on TBS and truTV and streaming on HBO Max, as USA Today reported. The winner hosts — well, the winner faces the Tampa Bay Rays in the ALCS, which begins Monday. The Rays are sitting at home, rested, watching these two beat each other up. Nice work if you can get it.

The history says this is a coin flip with long odds on the comeback: since MLB introduced the best-of-five division series in 1995, only seven teams have completed the comeback after falling behind 2-0, per USA Today. The Guardians can become the eighth. The White Sox, for their part, had two chances to close this out in front of their own fans and couldn't do it — the Beacon Journal noted Chicago struggled to close out the Guardians multiple times in September too, and that habit has followed them into October.

One game. Nine innings. A trip to the ALCS on the line. Saturday night in Cleveland is going to be electric — and somebody's season is ending.